seeming to be a mystery about him, people began to regard him with suspicion. He was for ever roaming the sea-shore; he had patched up an old worn-out boat, and in it he would go out when few else cared to venture. Many a time those who watched him afar, now hidden in the angry sea, now riding over the crested billows, asserted that he would venture once too often; but, let the tempest rage as it might, George always contrived to weather the storm and to come safe to land. Finding the half-tumbled-down farm-house-out of which no one had ever turned him-inconveniently far from the dangerous element in which he took his pastime, George by degrees removed the few scanty pieces of furniture to the shelter of the ruined house, which has been described as situated in Fairstoke Bay. The toil of turning this house into a habitable dwelling seemed to afford relief to the miserable man. Gradually he appeared less wild-looking, evinced a sort of pride in the shelter he had contrived, and his granddaughter, whom, to the scandal of everybody, he had called, after the ship her father suffered in, Loyalty, being by this time five years old, he brought the child to live with him.

Many changes had been wrought around during the years which had since then passed. Jake George could not be known as the same man he was when the heavy troubles just related fell upon him. By degrees his circumstances seemed to become better, and yet the absence of any visible proof of gaining his livelihood remained the same. What people did see did not tend to raise him in their opinion. He bred gamecocks, which he sold, although no one could say to whom; and most of the men held in bad odour in the villages made "The Cot," as he had dubbed his dwelling, their rendezvous.

With this history of her parents, her grandfather, and her surroundings, was it to be wondered at, that the carefully-broughtup, respectable Roger Coode should try to crush his love, and tear the image of Loyalty from out his heart and memory? It was for this reason he had banished himself from her, and from his home. Now that he had returned, the question was: Would pride or love gain the victory?

CHAPTER VIII.

THE morning after his return home Roger did not make his appearance until, for him, a very late hour. The night had been long and sleepless. It must have been near the dawn before he closed his eyes.

Mrs. Coode had passed a night as wakeful as her son, but she

was of an age when morning restlessness is a sure sequence to mental disturbance; therefore it was in reality a positive relief to get up, and try to lose herself in the distraction of her house duties.

The breakfast was ready when Roger came down, full of excuses for the laziness which had made him so late.

Mrs Coode never breathed a word that on the previous night she had heard him return home; she neither asked questions about his walk nor its object; and Roger, satisfied that she simply imagined he had strolled, smoking his pipe, along the Lees and back, did not affect the talkativeness he would have deemed necessary had he seen that her curiosity was excited.

"I expect for a bit everything 'll seem a little strange, Roger," Mrs. Coode began, the breakfast being over, and her son evidently undecided as to how he should dispose of his time. "Two years and more to sea must make it hard to realise you're on the land again."

"Yes, I was just beginning to wonder what I should set myself to do."

"The life don't appear to have disagreed with you," continued Mrs. Coode; "though I trust in mercy you haven't no thought of going no long voyages again."

Roger laughed.

"Come come," he said, "you must give me time to shake down. I haven't hardly been properly brought to my moorings yet. One thing I know, and that is, I don't want to go so far nor so long away from mother again."

She gave back the look of affection with which Roger was regarding her.

"Ah, it does me good to hear you say that. I dare say there's lots more besides me who, if the king's ships waited to be manned till the mothers sent their sons aboard 'em, 'ud have a poor crew to fight the Frenchmen with."

Koger had got up and had gone to the window, where he stood looking across to the opposite side.

It was low water—an ebb tide—the bed of the river was almost dry. Amid the mud and washed-up weed a flock of ducks were feasting, quack, quacking their delight as they went along under shore. In front of the house some boys and men were digging for bait. In the angle, on the other side, close by the water's edge, stood the little public-house of Fairstoke, with its painted sign of a swan; facing it on this side, but higher up the shore, was the Ferrers inn, the Crown, the independent mind of both villages being shewn in each having its own church, carrier, shop,

and public-house. In this latter case Fairstoke had the advantage; for while Ferrers was content with one house of call, Fairstoke, in addition to the quiet Swan, had the uproarious Cat and Fiddle, kept by the disreputable Hockaday.

It was towards this evil-spoken-of hostelry that Roger's thoughts were straying. He was recalling the gossip his mother had repeated that Loyalty was known to be "carrying on on" with Hockaday's son, and had been heard to sing songs among the men assembled at the Cat and Fiddle.

"I b'lieve I'll go and take a bit of a turn over to Fairstoke, mother. Charley Edmonds' folks lives there, and I promised I'd look 'em up when I got back home."

"Ah, he was the poor soul who got killed through fallin' from the mizen top," said Mrs. Coode sympathetically.

Yes, but before he died, though, he'd both his legs took off, and his shoulder set, and his collar-bone, too."

"Dear heart!"

"The doctors knowed it was no good; they said from the first he was a dead man; but Charley was very much respected among 'em, and I think they wanted him to feel they was like doin' somethin' for him."

"Um!" said Mrs. Coode; "I likes to hear of them that's like that to poor dears away from their homes."

"I was in the sick bay myself at the time," added Roger, "so seed the whole of it from first to last; and that's what makes me fancy they'll like to have a jaw with me."

"I'm sure they will; 'twould be all the comfort in life if 'twas my case to know that everything that could be had bin done. Yes, you go to once, my dear; 'tis a act of charity.”

"What are you goin' to be up to?"

"Oh, now, don't you never mind about me; I've got the dinner to see after; and so long as you're home by ha'-past twelve to eat it, I don't ask to see your face till then."

Roger put on his hat and went to the door, his mother following him so far.

"The voss is clear," she said, "if you mean to cross there."

And after he had gone she went to the wall which separated the narrow road from the garden, and stood watching him until he had passed over the voss, as the stepping-stones are called which at low tide unite the two villages together.

Satisfied thus far, she had begun some domestic occupation, when an apparently recognised tap at the door made her call out "Come in." "Ah!" she said, with satisfaction, "I thought 'twas you. I was wonderin' whether you mightn't run down this mornin'."

"I'd got it in my heart to come down last night," said the new-comer, smiling. "Only I thought that would never do, and it your first evenin', and all."

"I won't tell you you wouldn't have been welcome," and Mrs. Coode nodded cordially; "and I think I may own that that's more than I'd say to any other body."

Phoebe Rowe, for it was she, shewed that she was fully alive to the compliment paid her.

"You're always so kind, Mrs. Coode," she said. "When father's praisin' up what I do, I often thinks 'tis to Mrs. Coode his praise is due. I b'lieve Aunt Tishy and Aunt Tammy is a little bit put out now and then, for father's very outspoken, you know, and he will say what he thinks, and he does think ever so much about you."

"If your aunt is just in their thoughts of me, Phoebe, they knows I've never been the one to interfere with or upset anything they might have learned you; although there's a right way and a wrong of doin' everything in this world, and-well, I can't say their ways would ever be mine."

"No, certainly not," said Phoebe, in a conciliatory tone. "However, to do 'em justice, they're never the ones to deny that many of the things I do is all along of your showin'. People often goes on about me being so handy, and they can't think how it is, but I could tell 'em, and so could aunts, too."

"A motherless girl, Phoebe, ought, under the hand of Providence, to be the care of every woman; but there! you can't expect two old maids who never had no childern of their own to feel the same as I may. Added to which there's two sorts to try and learn; the one 'll take it all in, and on the other 'tis all throwed away. Nobody can tell that better than I can. I've only to cast my eyes on you and on Loyalty."

Phoebe heaved a profound sigh. "Ain't it a thousand pities," she said; "and you so kind to her, and all."

"Well, I don't know about kind," said Mrs. Coode, whose conscience did not permit her to appropriate anything beyond that she considered her due. "I've strove to show her her duty, and when I've seed her doin' wrong, she's heard of it from me; but you know, Phoebe, that doesn't suit every one; there must be good seed in the heart before we can bear to be told our faults meekly, and that seed hasn't yet found its way to Loyalty George.

""Tis very disheartenin', though, when anybody's like that; and Loyalty should remember there isn't many as 'll take that trouble, and ought to try and learn all she can—a girl with no father nor mother to look to."

"Well, I don't know that that need be much of a concern to her," said Mrs. Coode dryly.

"No, I know, not the father; but the mother was different, wasn't she? I s'pose you recollects her? Aunt Tishy says she minds seein' her very well."

"Oh, I dessay," said Mrs. Coode stiffly; "but I was never the one to be runnin' off to these revels and raree-shows they used to have goin' on then. If I was needed for sickness or sorrow, people knew where to find me. I was as great a stay-at-home in them days as I am now."

"Aunt Tishy," continued Phoebe, "don't know that she'd ha' dwelt in her memory so; only when everybody was talkin' up 'bout he bein' hung, and she struck with death at hearin' of it, they recalled her as bein' the one who'd ha' wore the long eardrops to Miss Anne's party."

Mrs. Coode nodded her head solemnly. "Yes," she said, emphasizing her remark by fixing her eyes on Phoebe, "and them's the same eardrops you may see on Loyalty now;" and after pausing to allow for due horror at her statement, she added: "The first time she came into my sight with 'em in, it made my blood run cold; it seemed downright awful to me for anybody who'd had a parent hung to go and trick theirselves out with things like them in their ears."

"It might be that she didn't think," began Phoebe.

"Didn't think!" echoed Mrs. Coode scornfully; "if so, and she'd no thought for herself, after listenin' to me she know'd what I for one thought of her."

"And did she seem to mind?"

"Mind! She flew out like a young turkey cock; and 'twas gabble, gabble, gabble, one word a top of another, 'bout their bein' her mother's and her gran'mother's, and I don't know who's; only," and here Mrs. Coode made a stop, "I thought I caught the words of their bein' French."

"No?" exclaimed Phoebe-"I never!"

"I don't vouch for it, you know, but I'm pretty sure that's what she said; and I've heard before 'bout the old gran'father bein' thought to be a Jersey man. If 'tis so, why it's all accounted for, as you may say her ways and that," she added in explanation. "I've heerd my poor husband tell-'twas peace, and he traded to France, you know-how that the women there was as boid as brass, laughin' and singin' and makin' so free; and at night times they'd come all of 'em out into the streets and stand about 'mongst the men, holdin' forth and havin' their say, with long eardrops in their ears and gold trinklets round their necks, but not a bit o'